[Terror] Did I Miss Something?
I think I'm as much of a news junkie as the next person, but more and more I'm catching comments made in passing, and I find myself asking, "Did I already know that? Was there a news story about that? Did I miss it?"
Case in point. CNN had a report on dangers reporters face. Casually it was observed that many European news agencies were pulling their reporters out of Iraq, and that agencies like CNN and the Washington Post are evaluating their presence on a day-by-day basis. Okay, so high-minded people are going to complain about how we'll ever know what's going on there without the media, but I kept thinking, "The Bush administration keeps telling us that things are getting better there, and if they're getting worse, it's only becasue they're getting better." And that seems to be working. But if news from Iraq suddenly disappears completely from newspapers and televisions, won't that seem odd? Surely that won't be easily explained away? "The media were caught up in The Rapture." You just know that's not going to fly.
A few days ago, after the most recent assassination attempt on Allawi. someone from CNN mentioned that one of the more troubling aspects was that the assassins had missed by only minutes, and Allawi's movements are closely guarded, for security reasons, and so the implication was that the insurgents are getting excellent intelligence from deep within the Iraqi government. (Apparently the military has been "concerned" for some time about infiltration.) I think I understand the concept of a difficult situation, and I think I understand messy situations...but this is looking more and more like one of those untenable situations.
One last example. I read - I think it was in the New Yorker - another passing comment, about how the western road out of Iraq through Syria was closed, for all intents and purposes. Too dangerous. Isn't that a big deal? And today I heard on CNN that the airport road was becoming increasingly dangerous. The report was on some act of violence, number of wounded and killed, etc. But no one seemed to pick up that maybe the location of the violence might be significant. So there are three ways out of Iraq: the western road, now closed, the airport road, increasingly dangerous, and the road through Kuwait. If all the roads in and out of Iraq became impassable, wouldn't that leave all of our ground troops stranded in the midst of a population more and more antagonistic to our presence? You have thousands of US troops surrounded by millions of angry Iraqis.....that's a pretty significant hostage crisis. A friend of mine mentioned that such a scenario has probably occurred to the military as well, and that they probably already have contingency plans. Everything is under control, because......well, if it weren't, there'd surely be some news report.
Case in point. CNN had a report on dangers reporters face. Casually it was observed that many European news agencies were pulling their reporters out of Iraq, and that agencies like CNN and the Washington Post are evaluating their presence on a day-by-day basis. Okay, so high-minded people are going to complain about how we'll ever know what's going on there without the media, but I kept thinking, "The Bush administration keeps telling us that things are getting better there, and if they're getting worse, it's only becasue they're getting better." And that seems to be working. But if news from Iraq suddenly disappears completely from newspapers and televisions, won't that seem odd? Surely that won't be easily explained away? "The media were caught up in The Rapture." You just know that's not going to fly.
A few days ago, after the most recent assassination attempt on Allawi. someone from CNN mentioned that one of the more troubling aspects was that the assassins had missed by only minutes, and Allawi's movements are closely guarded, for security reasons, and so the implication was that the insurgents are getting excellent intelligence from deep within the Iraqi government. (Apparently the military has been "concerned" for some time about infiltration.) I think I understand the concept of a difficult situation, and I think I understand messy situations...but this is looking more and more like one of those untenable situations.
One last example. I read - I think it was in the New Yorker - another passing comment, about how the western road out of Iraq through Syria was closed, for all intents and purposes. Too dangerous. Isn't that a big deal? And today I heard on CNN that the airport road was becoming increasingly dangerous. The report was on some act of violence, number of wounded and killed, etc. But no one seemed to pick up that maybe the location of the violence might be significant. So there are three ways out of Iraq: the western road, now closed, the airport road, increasingly dangerous, and the road through Kuwait. If all the roads in and out of Iraq became impassable, wouldn't that leave all of our ground troops stranded in the midst of a population more and more antagonistic to our presence? You have thousands of US troops surrounded by millions of angry Iraqis.....that's a pretty significant hostage crisis. A friend of mine mentioned that such a scenario has probably occurred to the military as well, and that they probably already have contingency plans. Everything is under control, because......well, if it weren't, there'd surely be some news report.
posted by Chris Hodge at 4:05 PM
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